Bank of Canada bureaucrats received $20 million in bonuses last year despite record-high inflation and seven interest rate hikes.

The Crown corporation also gave out over $6 million in pay raises in 2022.

“Bonuses are for people who do a good job, not people who fail at their one and only job,” said Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).

“Most organizations don’t shower employees with bonuses when they have their worst year in four decades.”

The average bonus was $11,200 and 80% of the Bank of Canada’s workforce received one. 

Despite the Bank of Canada’s mandate to keep inflation hovering at 2%, a 40-year record high 6.8% in 2022 wasn’t enough to convince the Bank’s executives to hold off from doling out millions in bonuses.

Now that the Bank of Canada has hiked the interest rate to 5%, some are concerned that recent Canadian homebuyers are at risk of defaulting on their mortgages, even though the Bank of Canada’s Governor, Tiff Macklem, predicted last summer “This is not what we expect to happen.”

In November 2020, Macklem made the terrible prediction that inflation would remain “less than 2% into 2023.”

Macklem admitted in 2022 that “we got some things wrong,” and the deputy governor acknowledged “we haven’t managed to keep inflation at our target.”

49% of the Bank of Canada workforce, which is approximately 1,095 staff members, makes over $100,000 a year.

“Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland should find savings by ending bonuses at failing Crown corporations like the Bank of Canada,” said Terrazzano.